


this is home

by visionfugitive (marblecranes)



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Unreliable Narrator, Vignette, Zombie Apocalypse, at least i dont think its very graphic ?, cottage-core lesbians vibing as the world ends, disclaimer: no one dies, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marblecranes/pseuds/visionfugitive
Summary: “Do you ever get tired of me?” Tsugumi asks one day. It’s a little embarrassing, but not an odd question—they’d been living in solitude for the past year and a half, with no one else but each other.“You’re all I have now.” Her answer isn’t a solid yes or no, but the look in Sayo’s eyes is soft as rain. Something about it warms Tsugumi to the core.Wandering vagabonds that find solace in each other, in the aftermath of something far greater than themselves.
Relationships: Hazawa Tsugumi & Hikawa Sayo, Hazawa Tsugumi/Hikawa Sayo
Comments: 13
Kudos: 95





	this is home

In all the time Tsugumi has known Sayo, it’s felt like they’re the only people in the world. 

She’s pretty sure it’s June now, and her second summer spent with Sayo. Rays of sun shine through between the curtains of their cabin. Tsugumi shifts beneath thin sheets, eyes blinking open as soft light falls over her face. Sayo has an arm and a leg over her. Their bodies fit snugly together and it’s warm and safe. Like a blanket to childhood bedroom demons, she knows deep down that it’s only a placebo, but the sense of security she feels stays true in her eyes. She quietly gets up and is careful not to stir Sayo as she walks over to the curtains to part them.

The view from their window isn’t as nice as the balcony, but the latter’s wood had already been rotting when they first arrived and fell apart weeks ago. The balcony’s remnants (or at least whatever hadn’t been used for firewood already), lay in a heap at the base of the cabin. It’s already so sunny outside, but the birds tell her it’s morning. Dawn, morning, afternoon—time blends together, sometimes, but keeping track maintains some sense of normalcy. 

Tsugumi quickly scans the front yard, skimping over the path leading up to their barricaded front door. Its stone is barely visible, covered in overgrown greenery down to each slate. 

More importantly, there’s no one outside. 

“Tsugumi-san…?” Sayo’s voice is cracked and groggy. She sits up in bed and stretches with a yawn. 

Tsugumi jumps a little. She pushes the curtains back shut and turns towards Sayo. “Oh! Uh… Good morning, Sayo-san.” 

“What were you doing?” 

“I was looking outside,” she cracks a nervous smile, “All clear today, too.”

Another peaceful morning.

For breakfast, they have canned beans and steamed rice that Tsugumi cooks over a fire, and as always, Sayo sings high praises to her for it, like it’s the first meal they’ve had together and not the hundredth. Or thousandth. She had lost count ages ago, and she knows Sayo has, too.

Breakfast is quiet, for the most part. Sayo promises she’ll make lunch, and then dinner, too. “It’s not fair for Tsugumi-san to have to make every meal.”

“I don’t mind, I like cooking.” She replies quietly, “Makes things feel more normal, I think. And seeing you happy makes me happy.”

“Is that so?” Sayo’s ears start turning red as she continues eating. “Still, I insist.”

  
  
  


Behind their home is an enclosed area. It’s not very safe, either, but there are leftover fruits and vegetables growing there from the cabin’s previous owners. Many of them have been trampled, but some persist. It’s a rare day in June gone without rain, so she goes out to water the plants herself with the water in their reserves. 

There’s a small berry bush in the backyard and a tomato one. A few green onions that are still growing. An apple tree. She doesn’t harvest everything at once since the cabin’s out of a working fridge and letting everything spoil would be a waste. In the midst of the garden’s mess, at the center, a pea plant stands tall and defiantly as if enraged at the world. Tsugumi never fails to laugh at the sight of it. It reminds her of Ran a little, even if Ran hated peas enough to wear a hoodie against them.

She crouches down and sprinkles a little water over it, and wonders if she should pick some peas for a future meal when—

...

_CRACK!_

The echoing thunder of a gunshot brings her attention back to reality. 

Tsugumi’s blood chills at the sound as a body falls onto the ground beside her. 

Pallid, twitching limbs, and a hole in its head. Panic swells over her like a crashing tide that pushes her stumbling back. Primordial fear—her instincts scream _fight or flight_ , but all she can do is freeze up when her hands don’t have a weapon in them. She’s seen enough to know that it can’t hurt her anymore with those injuries, but the pale-green tinge of skin is enough to send her pulse racing. Tsugumi looks over her shoulder where it was previously standing.

Sayo stands on the back porch with a shotgun propped on her shoulder. Overpowering the fresh, metal scent of copper in the air is the smoke that rises from the tip of the barrel. In the brief glimpse Tsugumi gets before they lock eyes, she registers the wide-eyed panic on Sayo’s face. It’s not something she sees often, not since they had started inhabiting this cabin smack dab in the middle of nowhere, but she remembers it from their days in the swamped city. 

The frantic look on Sayo’s face quickly melts into a sad smile when their eyes meet, fondness alongside concern thawing out in the ice in her countenance. Years ago, she would have been more pointed, but time and growing fondness is what whittles it away, rounds out the edges of her sternness. “You checked the front of the house, but not the back. I got worried.”

“Sorry, Sayo-san. I forgot to look out, and I was careless, and…” Tsugumi’s voice trails off as she scrambles to her feet, running off back to the door, to Sayo’s side. She had left her watering can in the midst of her panic, but everything screams at her to leave it there. Sayo’s calm and steady as always, but no matter how many of these encounters they have, Tsugumi can’t quite seem to match her level of tact. She wishes she could. Where her knees buckle and her limbs turn to stone, Sayo stays strong, and Tsugumi wishes she could thank her enough. Looking to her companion, Tsugumi finally finishes with a shaky breath, “And… Thank you.”

“It’s okay,” Sayo says distantly. She lowers the shotgun, but keeps her hold on it tight. “We don’t come across _those_ very often here, but it’s still important to be careful.”

Tsugumi’s hands stop shaking when Sayo closes hers around them. It’s their second summer together, but Sayo and Tsugumi are going into the third autumn since the zombie apocalypse had uprooted life as they knew it.

* * *

September winds bring ill tidings, and the autumn season dyes the leaves a different kind of red.

She and Sayo have been in it for the long run since the beginning, now that Tsugumi thinks about it.

It was a weekday when the apocalypse first broke out. Tsugumi had gotten the time for practice mixed up, and Sayo showed up about fifteen minutes early. Rumors of odd-looking people had gone out that morning, but no one believed it—it’s a little too much like the television. Gaunt, pale skin, bleeding orifices, and cannibalizing tendencies. The rumors scare Tsugumi when she first hears about it at lunch, but Tomoe reassures her that it’s like those urban legends that float around.

Except there’s a problem, when zombies start stalking the streets and within twenty minutes, they seem to just multiply and multiply. 

Neither of them notices until a zombie wanders into Livehouse Circle’s lobby and suddenly, there’s screaming and running and _absolute mayhem_. Sayo pulls Tsugumi into a practice room and locks the door, barricading it with chairs and the like. Tsugumi helps out, hurling objects around with shaky arms, until their pile is three-quarters way to the ceiling. She curls up in the corner and cries softly as she covers her ears, but the practice room still isn’t soundproof enough and it feels like it’s going to collapse in on her no matter how small she gets. 

She still remembers the image of Sayo dismantling a mic stand and using it as a pole to bludgeon zombies as they fight their way out of the Livehouse Circle building. At that point, no one’s phones were working, and neither of them knows where their bandmates or relatives are. 

So they stick together. 

The town’s swamped with zombies and every day it gets harder to find shelter. They’ve been searching every nook and cranny, from school buildings to their own homes.

  
  
  


“We can keep looking… Maybe Hina-san went to Hanasakigawa to look for you!” Tsugumi says when their search at Haneoka turns up empty. She feels a little discouraged, too. None of the members of Afterglow are anywhere within sight, and there’s no way for her to know what happened to them either. She can only hope they’re still alive, even if it’s unlikely.

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep looking around here? We probably won’t be able to find your bandmates at Hanasakigawa if we go there, and they might just be in hiding.” Sayo turns to Tsugumi, her dirt-streaked face creased with concern. Zombies lay at their feet, but Tsugumi doesn’t look down. 

“We’ve searched everywhere. Even the roof.” Tsugumi hates to admit it, but they’ve searched virtually every room of the building, and have even checked the rooftop, where she and the rest of Afterglow had spent so many afternoons watching the dimming sun make its descent. If anyone were here, they would have found them a long time ago. She smiles, “I don’t want to slow you down, Sayo-san.”

“Hazawa-san…” Sayo looks at her with wide-eyed shock, and then smiles. It's tender, more like the warm caress of day's sun than the night that she should be. “Thank you. Your optimism is reassuring in these times.”

“I’m not as confident or brave as you. It’s not much, but it’s all I can offer,” Tsugumi says with a nervous laugh. She doesn’t miss the frown on Sayo’s lips in response, but grazes over the insecurity quickly. “But really, I’m sure everyone else is safe, and we will find them eventually!”

“I hope so.” Sayo turns as she cleaves down a zombie with a baseball bat that she found in a clubroom’s closet.

* * *

But they don’t find Hina, even after months of searching. The city gets more and more dangerous as the days pass by, and soon there are more zombies than humans. Tsugumi and Sayo never stay in the same building for long. They always have a backdoor open wherever they go. Sleep in shifts. One hand on a weapon at all times. That sort of thing. Sayo’s often high-strung, Tsugumi notices, but it keeps them out of bad trouble. 

They come across a group of dead survivors in a shop. 

It’s all busted up, on the inside, but there’s a solid lock on the door and shut blinds. It’s not a bad hideout, and there are no zombies in it, oddly. Just bodies strewn over the floor, with chipping blood staining the floor. Suicide, from what Tsugumi and Sayo can tell, but they don’t look for very long. It’s only been about four months, and neither of them can stomach the stench of death very well, nor the sight of it.

“I knew one of them—all of these people, actually,” Sayo confesses with a quivering voice as they search the bodies for supplies and identification. She slips a hand into one of their jacket packets and pulls out an empty wallet. “I went to school with her.”

Tsugumi looks at her as she rummages through one of the bags on the counter, struggling to find the words to respond. “I’m really sorry about that, Sayo-san.”

“Don’t be. None of this is your fault.” 

And that’s the hardest thing about the apocalypse. Beneath the disfigured skin and screwed up faces, Tsugumi can still see what makes them human. The adrenaline rush feels like a thin sheet pulled over her senses but when she looks into someone’s eyes, just to see a flicker of life in them before she snuffs it out, there’s a terrible sinking feeling as she does. She can't imagine how much worse it'd feel if she _recognizes_ the face. Tsugumi’s just thankful she hasn’t come across someone who looks too familiar.

Encountering someone so close to home feels like a wake-up call, Tsugumi thinks. They find some firearms behind the counter, but don’t take very long to question where the weapons came from or what they were used for. 

Sayo doesn’t say a word for the rest of the day, or at least nothing more than a few monosyllabic mumbles. Tsugumi pulls her in close at night when her shoulders shake and messy hiccups are tumbling out of Sayo’s throat. 

It’s a hesitant tug on her sleeve at first—even in tears, would Sayo be uncomfortable with the affection?—but Sayo leans into her arms, nesting her face in the crook of her neck. Tsugumi lays her worn jacket over them like a blanket and rests her head atop Sayo’s. 

“It’s okay to cry,” Tsugumi mumbles as she runs her fingers through long, teal hair, “You’re safe. We’re gonna be okay.” 

“I…” Sayo takes in a shuddering breath, “I’m sorry, Hazawa-san. You—You shouldn’t have to see me like this.”

“Tsugumi,” she says after a while. Slanted green eyes stare back at her, one eyebrow cocked when she reiterates, “‘Tsugumi-san’ is okay.”

* * *

(“Do you ever get tired of me?” Tsugumi asks one day. It’s a little embarrassing, but not an odd question—they’d been living in solitude for the past year and a half, with no one but each other.

“You’re all I have now.” Her answer isn’t a solid yes or no, but the look in Sayo’s eyes is soft as rain. Something about it warms Tsugumi to the core.)

* * *

When morning’s splendor filters in through the blinds once more, Sayo nudges Tsugumi awake. Tsugumi opens her eyes as the abandoned shop swims back into view and the scent of something dead hits her nose out of nowhere, but Tsugumi’s used to it already. 

They’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, but Tsugumi finds that she doesn’t really mind, idly noting the red hues of Sayo’s cheeks when they awaken.

“Let’s leave.” 

“We just got here last night?” Tsugumi asks sleepily, surveying the shop. No immediate dangers.

“No, Tsugumi-san. I want to leave the town. With you.”

She does a double take, jerking her head to look at Sayo. “Wait—huh?” 

“It’s too dangerous to stay here,” Sayo looks down at the ground, “We’ve searched for so long, but no one’s come up, and every day, the number of zombies increases.”

Tsugumi searches her face. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Sayo, far from it, but she knows that Sayo has moments of being a little too considerate of those around her. Leaving town would feel like an admission that their loved ones are all dead, even if that’s something both of them had been grappling with for the past few months. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

“It’d be selfish to continue endangering you.” Sayo gets up from the ground and hands Tsugumi her jacket back, “I want to find Hina, but if we hadn’t seen her at this point, she might not be here at all anymore.”

 _Or dead_ , neither of them says.

“Let’s go, then.” Tsugumi nods. They search adjacent stores for supplies, pack their bags, and head out of town into the wilderness.

* * *

The forest is a mess of overhanging verdure, but after some walking Tsugumi and Sayo come across a trail of sorts. They follow the path down to nothing but the sound of birds and rustling trees. When they grow tired of talking, the pair stroll in comfortable silence, and when they grow tired of silence, they make idle, small talk. If Tsugumi tries hard enough, she can pretend they’re hiking and not fleeing for their lives.

They make a stop by a clear river to take a break. There’s a dubious looking wooden bridge spanning across the width of the river that Tsugumi takes a seat on, and Sayo promptly joins her. 

“Are you okay?” Tsugumi asks.

“I am alright.” She can see the individual stones at the bottom of the river, and the rushing water is clear beneath their feet. She finds the same clarity in Sayo’s eyes. “Are you?”

“Well, I’m just glad we’re still alive.” 

“I am, too. Odd that our standards for happiness have dropped so low.”

Tsugumi lets out a murmur of agreement. “I miss school. I miss my friends, and having band practices with them.”

“I do, too.” 

Tsugumi looks away as the conversation dies down, and then points to a spot in the distance, atop a hill. “Sayo-san! I think that’s a house. Maybe there’s people.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere. If there’s people, I’m not sure if they’ll be trustworthy…” Sayo says with uncertainty.

“It’s better than no shelter, right?” Tsugumi stands up and slings her bags back over her shoulders. “Let’s go!”

They follow the dirt path in that direction, and then trudge off the path through some foliage. Through it, they eventually come across a mossy stone path. Following it up the hill, Tsugumi begins to catch sight of something through the endless mess of branches and leaves. At the summit of the hill, there’s a clearing and at its center, a cabin.

“Sayo-san!” Tsugumi drags Sayo out of the forest by the wrist and runs to the cabin, “Look!”

Sayo walks after her with a hand on the firearm strapped to her hip, “We should still be careful—”

“Hmm, you’re right. Watch my back, please.” Tsugumi swings the door open. Wood creaks beneath her feet—a slow, dragging sound as she steps onto it. She listens for a sound.

Sayo leans over her and peeks in with a whisper, “I don’t think anyone is in here, but we should scout for zombies.”

There’s two upstairs. Sayo and Tsugumi take one each and discover a third body in the backyard. 

“The furniture in here was nice,” Tsugumi says after they’ve calmed down. She’s searching through the kitchen, rummaging through to see what she can make use of and what needs to be tossed. Most of the things in the fridge have gone bad, but she’s not sure where she’d dump it anyway. Probably in the trees far away, when she has the chance. There’s no running water, either, but it’s better than nothing. When she’s done looking through the fridge, she turns to her partner and says cheerily, “I think we can stay here for a bit.”

“Yeah?” Sayo asks, a smile on her lips. “It’ll be the closest thing to a home we’ve had in a while.”

Tsugumi hums contentedly. “Yep! This is home.” 

Tsugumi thinks that before them, there might’ve been a family living here just like them, and Sayo does, too, but neither of them says a word about it. 

Instead, they pretend everything’s okay.

* * *

It works, too, for years. For the most part, they’re living their days out in the middle of nowhere and nothing. Their lives are safe but stagnant; frozen in time. Sometimes, Tsugumi even forgets that beyond their quaint little fence, the world is burning down around them. 

Their back porch is a sloppy handiwork of rusted nails binding rotting wood planks together, Tsugumi realizes as she looks down upon it, her hand in Sayo’s. The dead zombie is still in their backyard, and the two of them have been just sitting on their backyard’s steps looking at it. Or, in Tsugumi’s case, in the general direction of it, as her honeyed eyes peer around their garden. Do zombie corpses make for good fertilizer? Or will it poison the crops?

Sayo laughs. It’s a dry and humorless sound. “We’ve sure gotten comfortable.”

“Is that okay with you?” 

“Yeah.” A pause. “It’s better than being eaten alive, and I like your company.”

“I feel the same way,” she replies with an easy smile that fades as quick as it’d come, when she asks, “But do you ever wonder what it’d be like elsewhere?”

“Not for a while, no. I think I’m accustomed to this kind of life now.” 

“You think they’re still out there?” They haven’t used names to refer to anyone else for a while now. Tsugumi stopped because it makes her sad, but she’s not sure about Sayo. “Every time I get comfortable, I can’t help but think about that.”

“We don’t know for sure how they’re doing. For all we know, they could be dead or zombies.”

“They could also be alive. I think I would rather think of it that way. It’s less lonely—” The look on Sayo’s face changes, so Tsugumi quickly adds, “Not that I dislike being around you, of course! It’s just… I miss them.”

“No, I know what you mean.” She shakes her head with a heavy sigh, “It’s odd. I wonder when I was okay with being so… Complacent. I never thought I would be happy staying so stationary, but it’s unclear where to go from here. Staying gives us a decent chance of survival, and… Leaving might ruin that.”

It’s true.

The idea of venturing back into the world secretly terrifies Tsugumi, but they’d survived months out there already at the start of the outbreak. It’s the thought of losing Sayo that scares her more than the zombies themselves.

“If you do choose to move on, I want to come with you,” Tsugumi replies carefully, finally, and her heart feels like it’s pounding out of her chest. “I think we’ll get through it, even if the odds are slim. We’ve done it before.”

“So optimistic.” A huff of a laugh. “But that’s one of the best things about you, and I think I could learn more about that from you, Tsugumi-san.” Instead of scorn, there’s affection in Sayo’s tone, as her hand tightens over Tsugumi’s. “And I may have, because… I agree. I think you and I could make it, if we so choose.”

There’s a rustling sound in the bushes and the loud shuddering groan of a monster. Without preamble, Sayo turns the barrel of her weapon to it. The gunshot is a clamorous, echoing sound, but Tsugumi finds comfort in it this time. 

**Author's Note:**

> hi! thanks for reading my one-shot all the way to the end. it's my first time writing sayotsugu, so i was a little worried about being able to do their characters and dynamic justice. i quite liked writing this, so i might explore the au more in a multi-chap, but i'm not very good with writing updates punctually LOL  
> as always, here's a quick [twitter plug](https://twitter.com/aftergl_ws) in case anyone wants to scream about bandori <3


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